


Keep building a house then tearing it down

by Kay245



Series: And I still hear the sound of the pack when they howl [4]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Catelyn Stark was a complicated woman, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Sansa is awsome, You just want to hug Jon so much, but well, post parentage reveal, she is always awsome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-14
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-04-22 18:24:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14314515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kay245/pseuds/Kay245
Summary: Set in the universe of And I still hear the wound of the pack when they howl but can still be read as a stand alone.After learning about his real parents, Jon goes sulk somewhere. After discussing with Arya, Sansa goes after him.





	Keep building a house then tearing it down

**Author's Note:**

> This happens toward the end of the story but I haven't yet quite managed to know when I'm going to place it exactly. What is sure though, is that Jon and Sansa are in love with one another (even if it hasn't been consummated yet, as they thought they were brother and sister). 
> 
> This deals with the aftermath of the parent reveal and I have to tell you, this is kind of my ultimate headcanon of how it could go between Sansa and Jon (even if they aren't in a relationship). I have to admit that sometimes I was bit teary as I wrote this and I hope that the level of emotions that this scene made me feel in my head will translate well in this story.
> 
> Ok, just as a warning, Catelyn Stark is mentioned heavily through this and I promise that I'm not trying to turn her into a saint or twist the relationship in canon. However, that said, I have to admit that the scene when Catelyn tells Talisa about how she'd cared for Jon when he was ill just tugged really hard at my heart. I know some would say that she was trying to do her duty (which I found ludicrous, nobody expects of her to love the lovechild that her husband got from adultery) or trying to gain Ned's approval (again, very implausible). In my heart of heart, I'm totally convinced that a part of Catelyn loved or cared a lot for Jon, despite her bitterness about him. If not, why would she go to that extent to try and keep him alive herself when she could have the Maester care for him? But well, that's my take on it.
> 
> I hope this will be OK.

The air was frigid in the crypts and Sansa couldn’t help goosebumps erupting on her skin at the temperature. She cursed herself at not taking the time to put on a warmer coat. Yet, she didn’t turn back. Jon was down here. Alone.

 

She recalled Arya’s piercing stare when she’d admonished her little sister about leaving Jon alone after the revelation made by Davos. Arya had just shrugged it off and went to serve herself some water before snarkily replying to Sansa. _I told him that he was my brother and that nothing would change that. He knows it. But it’s not from me that he needs reassurance from, is it? And we both know, that this reassurance should take quite another form coming from you._

Sansa had gaped at her little sister acknowledging, if a bit covertly, the change in feelings between her and Jon. That accounted to two, certainly, the number of people who knew about them. Arya. Davos. Tyrion suspected at the least. As for Bran, he probably knew but didn’t care. Alarm had threatened to engulf her then as she tried to silently recount when and where Jon and she had misstepped. Arya, though, had rolled her eyes at her and given her one of her now rare punches on the shoulder. _Go_ , she’d said. _What you fear doesn’t matter anymore now_. Sansa had run then, urged on by worry and a need to comfort. For the first time since that concern for his state of mind had awaken in herself - the time of it still precise in her mind, the morning when Jon shouted at her for almost letting a dead dragon take her to the tomb with it, she’d broken her brisk walk. She’d run.

 

The glacial atmosphere that threatened to silently entomb them into cold silence didn’t slow her down. She fled through the labyrinthine tunnels, she ran and in her precipitous pace almost dropped down to a neck breaking fall. She’d already run that fast once, scared as she’d been by a joke played on her of ghosts living in the crypts, but now, rather than fleeing the denied half-brother boy who’d frightened her, she ran to the man that came to mean more to her than even the closest  blood relation could have forged. She ran, she ran and her fear this time was for him. No, not fear, really, more like dread and anguish at the obvious pain he was in. She thought she’d find him in front of the statue of their - no not their, her - father, the man that had both saved and betrayed him. How was it that purest love and protection always came with the sharp edges of betrayal in her family? Father had lied and cast his trueborn nephew as a bastard to protect him, had lied and wounded her mother with tales of his infidelity, Robb had disowned her in, at least a bit, to protect her from men trying to get the North through her. Herself even, had made Father renege on his honour, on the truth for the hope that were would be clemency from Joffrey, as much a farce as it had been. She’d also lied to Jon about so many things, to procure him him more soldiers, more resources, anything she could have given really. As for Jon… Well, it seemed their whole family was cursed, always finding themselves wounding those they loved best…

 

Her thoughts cut as she finally came into view of Jon. He was in front of Lyanna’s statue, his eyes tilted toward the face made of delicately carved stone. He looked as a supplicant as if he was deep in prayer. As if attuned with the contemplative atmosphere, her pace slowed until her steps became light as a snowflake falling on the earth. As she reached him, there was a moment where she wondered if maybe she’d crept so slowly that she’d might startle him. She was still pondering on what she might say to break him softly from his trance when he spoke, disabusing her of any of that.

 

“I always thought that once I knew who my mother was, it would all make sense.” he said, his voice strangely detached, his gaze still glued to the statue’s still face.

 

Sansa looked at him and then at the statue and her heart ached at what she could decipher from his eyes. Jon looked so lost, so defeated as if something vital had been taken from him. And it _had been_. She couldn’t quite tell why, not yet, she wasn’t that good at sorting out visceral emotions, her lessons having always been on taking advantage of flightier, less profound feelings. Littlefinger had never understood them, never really understood how to really play them and she didn’t know if she was relieved he hadn’t been able to teach her about them or not. Because right now Jon was hurting and she didn’t know how to address that, how to comfort that deep a betrayal, to heal that devastating a wound. So she stayed silent, hoping that her mere presence would help, that he would be able to feel in her unborn words something that would soothe his soul.

 

“I have been there for… I don’t know really. I just thought…” he started and in the toneless voice, she could hear so many screams, so many tears. “I had always thought when I was a child, that she was somewhere, you know? That she’d really loved me and would have done anything for me, even if for some… for some reason she couldn’t be with me.” he swallowed heavily, as if confessing some dark secret.

 

Sansa’s heart broke at that. Because in a way, wasn’t that a dark secret to confess, from Jon Snow, the bastard child of Lord Stark, barely tolerated by the mother of the woman next to him? Right now, she realised, he wasn’t Jon, the man she loved, the man who’d fought for her, the man who’d fought _with_ her. No this was the little boy he’d once been, the little boy she’d never really knew, because she’d snubbed him to please her mother. She started to feel awkward and guilty but stomped down on those feelings. Now wasn’t the time to feel sorry for herself. Jon needed her, not the childish little girl who needed everyone to love and approve of her. Instead, she nodded at him to continue, even if he was still looking at the statue and not at her.

 

“At a time.. I was very ill, so it was probably the fever speaking... I even thought she’d sneaked into Winterfell to be with me, to care for me… I imagined that she’d stayed beside me all night and made one of those protection amulets that mothers do for their children to curry the favour of the gods” he said, his voice trailing down to a shuddery whisper.

 

Sansa realised how precious such a confession was. The secret hope of a lost little boy who had so wished to have a mother. And she also knew, that this dream of his had not been a dream afterall, as she’d found such an item secretly guarded in her mother’s room a few weeks before the arrival of King Robert to Winterfell. It’d been old, a bit withered and yet preciously sheltered as a sacred thing. There was such care in its safekeeping that she hadn’t dared ask her mother about it, decided to forget about it really, not knowing what to make about something that told about a love, a love not known to her mother’s children or husband. She was interrupted in her realisation as Jon took a steadying breath.

 

“I’ve known since then, that it hadn’t been possible really. But still, I thought…” He let the words die, as if the little strength he’d recovered had been all spent on admitting to the foolishness of his dream.

 

A dream that wasn’t foolish and Sansa inwardly debated whether she should tell Jon about the amulet she’d found, of her thoughts on it. Yet, how could she explain to Jon, that his dream of a loving mother had been real, only for her to be nothing than the cold, haughty woman who’d always shunned him for being the proof of her husband’s betrayal? That, that woman may have loved him in some recess of her heart but that this love had been stillborn in the pressure of her pride, bitterness and anger? She couldn’t, she knew. At least, not now. Not when Jon was already dealing with the shadow of a mother that had failed to be here for him in his time of need, as little at fault as she was in that.

 

“You thought your mother loved you so much that she would have braved anything to protect you.” she finally said, her voice low and as uneven as Jon’s. “And she did. She begged Father to protect you in her last breath.” she said, trying to give Jon his mother back.

 

He swallowed heavily next to her and she took his hand in hers. He trembled then, his hand clenching desperately around hers, as if her touch had unsettled the poor construction of his whole countenance. He shut his eyes then, for a moment, taking deep breaths.

 

“That’s why, I came down here.I thought… I thought that if I looked long enough into her face. I would feel it. I would feel that she was my mother. I would feel her love...” His voice broke and he turned to her, his long face etched into that particular universal mien of an unfairly wounded child.

 

Despite his abrupt stop, Sansa understood all the same the uncompleted sentence that pain made him unable to utter. _But there was nothing. Nothing like that memory of being loved and cared for when he’d been dreadfully ill._ She reached to him then, her heart aching, and she drew him into her arms. He came easily, his forehead nestling against her throat as she hummed and rocked him softly, like her mother had done for her or her siblings so many a time. He shook and his sobs were wrenching, tearing apart a piece of her soul as if the arrow of that so cruelly loving shot of her father had pieced them both. She tried to shush him, to calm him, the best she could.

 

“Jon, love... “ she said, not realising that she was voicing the hidden current between them for the first time. “It’s going to alright… I know… It’s going to be alright….” She poured all of her love inside those words, knowing that they didn’t need to make sense, just that they needed to make sense to him.

 

He looked at her then. His eyes were red, but they glittered with a thousand emotions. She kissed his forehead, his eyes, his cheeks and when he started sobbing again, she settled him back against her breast, until the tears stopped falling, and his body stopped shaking. Still, she kept him in her arms, because she could, because nobody would come and look for them here, because all in all, this was what he needed.


End file.
